Fedora gets new users, which eventually become contributors, by doing successful marketing campaigns promoting all the benefits of Fedora to the end user. A good marketing plan can be recognized in various ways, but some key elements clearly stand out:
- We need to work with a wide variety of people (SIGs, developers, beat writers..) to receive news content on a regular basis. This is the Marketing group's work.
- We need to get this content out to people who are outside of the traditional "Fedora-land". This is the Marketing and Ambassador group's work.
The news distribution network concept
The Fedora Insight initiative is a "passive" way of delivering a steady flow of news, while the News Distribution Network is an "active" tool to push the most important news all around the world.
Based on Smolt language statistics [1] and the Fedora Ambassador mailing list, we have an idea of what the most popular languages spoken by Linux users are. We want interesting Fedora news delivered to them in an efficient way. At this point in time, the most obvious languages to focus on are English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Italian and Arabic.
How does it work?
The news distribution network work-flow is quite simple:
- Members of the Marketing group will push news/monitor the content published on Fedora Insight.
- When a new of importance is relesed, we will contact the responsible people for each language and ask them to publish it to websites they care about in their language.
- People responsible for each language should decide who a news item is targeted at, that means to define the audience, 3 levels seem appropriate:
- Linux-centric websites: every news can concern them.
- Technical IT websites: alpha, beta and RC releases can concern them, as well as the Fedora Feature List items.
- General IT websites: they usually only care about distribution releases.
- Once a news item has been published, add it to the Fedora press archive page so we can track the marketing progress.
How do I join this effort as an Ambassador?
If you are interested in joining the news distrbution network for a specific language, simply contact moixs or write to the marketing group on our mailinglist. If we feel that you are motivated, you will have the job for one Fedora release cycle.
Your duties should not take much time, it consists of 3 main tasks:
- Update the list of publication wiki page to reflect the press you are talking to in your language.
- Freely translate news sent from the marketing group in your language.
- Push these news to the websites you think are important in your language.
- Update the press archive page so we can track your progress.
If you don't want to participate after a cycle, simply tell it to us and we will find someone else to replace you. What we need are dedicated people, so there is really no shame to resign.
Responsible people for the Fedora 11 cycle
For the current Fedora 11 cycle, the responsible ambassadors are:
- English: Jack, Shambo
- German: Heffer
- French: moixs
- Spanish: Tatica
- Portuguese: RodrigoPadula,Tiagovieira, RodrigoMenezes, RafaelGomes
- Hindi: Dbpatankar, Sparshme5, Akashmkj
- Italian: fugolini, gvarisco
- Arabic: Himam